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Playback issues in extant recordings

The accuracy of the pitch and speed of the extant recordings has been questioned. In The Guardian's
music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde states that "the common consensus
among musicologists is that we've been listening to [Robert] Johnson at
least 20% too fast;" i.e., that "the recordings were accidentally
speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were
deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting." He does not give a source for this statement. Former Sony music executive Lawrence Cohn, who won a Grammy
for the label's 1991 reissue of Johnson's works, "acknowledges there's
a possibility Johnson's 1936-37 recordings were sped up, since the
OKeh/Vocalion family of labels, which originally issued the material,
was 'notorious' for altering the speed of its releases. 'Sometimes it
was 78 rpms, sometimes it was 81 rpms,' he says. It's impossible to
check the original sources, since the metal stampers used to duplicate
the original 78 discs disappeared years ago."

Johnson's Death

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi.
He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about
15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. Differing accounts and theories
attempt to shed light on the events preceding his death. A story often
told is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a
dance; the wife of the juke joint
owner, according to rumor, unaware that the bottle of whiskey she gave
to Johnson had been poisoned by her husband. In another version, she
was a married woman unrelated to the juke joint owner. Johnson was
allegedly offered an open bottle of whiskey that was laced with strychnine. Fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson
allegedly advised him never to drink from an offered bottle that had
already been opened. According to Williamson, Johnson replied, "Don't
ever knock a bottle out of my hand." Soon after, he was offered another
open bottle of whiskey, also laced with strychnine, and accepted it.
Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after
drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the
early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily
worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of
severe pain—symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning.

Musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick
claims to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson, and to have
obtained a confession from him in a personal interview. McCormick has
declined to reveal the man's name however.

In his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson,
Tom Graves uses expert testimony from toxicologists to dispute the
notion that Johnson died of strychnine poisoning. He states that
strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be
disguised, even in strong liquor (according to the CDC, strychnine is bitter but odorless.).
He also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be
consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison
would occur within hours, not days.

Where Is Johnson's Grave?

The precise location of his grave is officially unknown; three
different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of
Greenwood.

Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was
buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church
near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked
grave. A one-ton cenotaph memorial in the shape of an obelisk, listing
all of Johnson's song titles, with a central inscription by Peter
Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia
Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.

In
1990 a small marker with the epitaph "Resting in the Blues" was placed
in the cemetery of Payne Chapel near Quito, Mississippi,
by the cemetery's owner. This alleged burial site, in an apparent
attempt to strengthen a claim, happens to be located in the center of
Richard Johnson's family plot.

More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from
Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that
the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the
Little Zion Church north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has
placed a marker at this site.

Devil legend

According to legend, as a young black man living on a plantation in
rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to
become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar
to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by
a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned
it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to
Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was, in effect, a
deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his
soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became
famous.

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara
and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's
rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.Son House once told the story to Pete Welding
as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the
guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read
article in Down Beat in 1966.
Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and
there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as
first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative re-tellings by Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer.
Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift
from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and
when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story.
All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in
the biography Crossroads
by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Tommy Johnson. This
story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his
elder brother Ledell in the 1960s. One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's biography of Tommy, and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads
but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that
Ike Zinnerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi
learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones.
Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young
Robert Johnson.[40] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth
uncovered Ike Zinnerman's daughter and the story becomes much clearer,
including the fact that Johnson and Zinnerman did practice in a
graveyard at night (because it was quiet and no one would disturb them)
but that it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed.
Johnson spent about a year living with, and learning from, Zinnerman,
who ultimately accompanied Johnson back up to the Delta to look after
him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.

The film O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers
incorporates the crossroads legend and a young African American blues
guitarist named Tommy Johnson, with no other biographical similarity to
the real Tommy Johnson or to Robert Johnson. There are now tourist
attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.

His own account

Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul
to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously, and these
claims are strongly disputed in Tom Graves' biography of Johnson, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson,
published in 2008. The crossroads detail was widely believed to come
from Johnson himself, probably because it appeared to explain the
discrepancy in "Cross Road Blues".
Johnson's high emotion and religious fervor are hard to explain as
resulting from the mundane situation described, unsuccessful
hitchhiking as night falls. The crossroads myth offers a simple literal
explanation for both the religion and the anguish.

In "Me And The Devil" he began, "Early this morning when you knocked
upon my door/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door/And
I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" before leading into
"You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body,
uumh, down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a
Greyhound bus and ride."

The song "Crossroads" by British psychedelic blues rock band Cream is a cover version of Johnson's "Cross Road Blues",
about the legend of Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the
crossroads, although Johnson's original lyrics ("Standin' at the
crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was merely hitchhiking
rather than signing away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for being a
great blues musician.

Interpretations

The Devil in these songs may not solely refer to the Christian model
of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba, himself
associated with crossroads—though author Tom Graves deems the
connection to African deities tenuous.This contention could stem from a lack of familiarity with the
pervasive retention of African religious roots among Southern Blacks
early in the 20th century. As folklorist Harry M. Hyatt discovered,
during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans
born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had
"sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different
meaning in mind. Ample evidence indicates African religious retentions
surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in
the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this
so-called "devil" at the crossroads.

Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African
American and European traditions, and were adapted into literature by,
amongothers, Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824, and by Stephen Vincent Benet
in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s the folklorist
Harry Middleton Hyatt recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers,
card sharks, and dice sharks selling their souls at crossroads, along
with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax
considered that every African American secular musician was "in the
opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a
consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful
in the extreme".

Musical style

Robert Johnson is today considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style. As Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said in 1990 "You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it."[46] But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta,
Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in
such a wide variety of styles—from raw country slide guitar to jazz and
pop licks—and to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a
song.
His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues," in contrast to the
prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago
or St. Louis, with "a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical
arrangement."
Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what
Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. "They're Red Hot,"
from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable
with an "uptown" swing or ragtime sound similar to the Harlem Hamfats
but, as Wald remarks, "no record company was heading to Mississippi in
search of a down-home Ink Spots. . . He could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them."

An important aspect of Johnson's singing was his use of micro tonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton
described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you
can find in the human voice." In two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues"
he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of
the last verse: "The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is
astonishing."
The song's "hip humor and sophistication" is often overlooked.
"Generations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism,"
writes Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that
show Johnson as a polished professional performer.

Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the
all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was highly complex and
extremely advanced musically. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his band mate Brian Jones,
he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it
was Johnson playing on one guitar. "I was hearing two guitars, and it
took a long time to actually realize he was doing it all by himself,"
said Richards.
Johnson would sometimes sing over the triplets in his guitar playing,
using them as an instrumental break; his chord progression not being
quite a standard Twelve-bar blues.

Who Influenced Johnson?

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the
broader music world. The slide guitar work on "Rambling on My Mind" is
pure Delta and Johnson's vocal there has "a touch of . . Son House
rawness," but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical
of Delta blues, and is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.
Johnson did record versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking
Blues" in the older bluesman's vocal and guitar style (House's
chronology is questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of "Come
On In My Kitchen," the influence of Skip James is evident in James's
"Devil Got My Woman", but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate
poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in
his recorded output.

The sad, romantic "Love in Vain" successfully blends several of
Johnson's disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last
verse, follows Leroy Carr's last hit "When the Sun Goes Down"; the
words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.
Johnson's last-ever recording, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" is his most
direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote "Milkcow Blues" and who
influenced Johnson's vocal style.

"From Four Until Late" shows Johnson's mastery of a blues style not
usually associated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in manner
reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a
ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.
Lonnie Johnson's influence on Robert Johnson is even clearer in two
other departures from the usual Delta style: "Malted Milk" and "Drunken
Hearted Man". Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson's "Life Saver
Blues".
The two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" show the influence of Peetie
Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as
"the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist."

His Legacy

Robert Johnson has had enormous impact on music and musicians that
came after him. This particularly considering he was an itinerant
performer—playing mostly on street corners, in juke joints,
and at Saturday night dances—who worked in a then undervalued style of
music, and who died young after recording only a handful of songs.
Johnson, though well-traveled and admired in his performances, was
little noted in his own time and place; his records even less so.
"Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record,
outsold his others but was still only a minor success.

If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Elijah Wald,
"the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled
'Robert who?'" This lack of recognition extended to black musicians:

"As far as the evolution of black music
goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little
that happened in the decades following his death would have been
affected if he had never played a note."

With the album King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation
of Johnson's recordings, Columbia Records introduced his work to a much
wider audience—fame and recognition he only received long after his
death.